Hi. The version you see on the theme developer's website may work differently from the one at WordPress.com. Other than that, you may want to ask WP.com directly about the difference:http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/

Also sorry to say this but I would not call the support you will receive in the Premium Themes Forum 'lots of help and support'. You get an answer after a couple of days or a week and in many cases only a partial one Im afraid. Obviously we've been really spoiled here by the volunteers, who answer our many queries in a few hours (minutes, even???!!! hehe) but don't think it's going to be the same over there. I know cos I bought a premium theme I am delighted with, but forum help has been dreadful to be honest with you.

It's hard to see what staff can do though, since premium theme support is meant to be provided by the developers of the theme, and they aren't Automattic employees. So Automattic's only real sanction is to threaten them with the removal of their theme from wordpress.com, but if wordpress.com is a low priority for them they might not care that much.

As for the differential pricing, my guess is that Automattic takes 50% of every theme sale, so if you want to make the same amount on .com as you do on .org you have to double your prices.

Several mention that the premium theme, if purchased from WP will run on wordpress.com. Now, I'm still wrapping my head around all this, but I thought that premium themes could NOT be hosted on .com and in fact I would need an independent host and set this up through wordpress.org. I currently have a site with ICDsoft hosting so that's not a problem but I'm confused!

There are also TWO different types of Premium Themes, those designed to run on WordPress.ORG installs (you buy them from the Theme Designer) and the ones from WordPress.COM that you see in your Dashboard (that you pay WordPress.COM for) here and are designed to run on WordPress.COM sites .

Auxclass - thank you. I've read and re-read that link but will have to do so a few more times before I have it clear in my head!

So if I understand you correctly, since I saw the Elemin theme on my dashboard>appearance>themes>premium this would be one that I pay wordpress.com for and is designed to run on wordpress.com itself. Is that correct?

Mmmm... My comment had nothing to do with the holidays though. I bought one of the themes that were released first. What I noticed is that immediately after a theme is released, the themes' authors are behind their desk trying to help out the first customers. However, after that period, it's really hard to get an answer in due time. And my themes' authors have authored other themes so it's not as if they do not have other links with wordpress apart from that contribution. Another recent example is that a few days ago someone who had bought a premium theme asked how to activate the slider on it, and if that wasnt possible, which theme does have one. Turns out their theme doesnt actually offer a slider. Ok what did the theme author reply? Something along the lines of 'what youve asked for is called a slider'. Full stop. Well, I know for a fact that if that person had been over here with the same question, someone would have given that person the procedure to look for themes using filters, or would have given names of such themes with sliders, or might have advised them to get a refund if their newly bought theme did not match what they wanted etc. None of that there. And I could go on and on with lots of examples I have seen over there which made me wish some of the people helping here could invest in a theme and tell us what they are really about. Anyhow, as I said, Im happy with my premium theme, it's just not really thanks to the forums.

Given my experience on the .ORG web site development side of things, I can tell you that the help for .ORG premium themes directly from the theme designer isn't any better in many cases. There are all sorts of promises about support and how good their forums are, but in reality... not so much.

One does have to keep in mind that these theme designers are in many cases providing support for 10, 20 or 50 themes and I suspect many of them are understaffed just due to the economics of things. I think that is one reason you are starting to see more "subscriptions" rather than a one-time purchase price so that they can be a steady flow of capital to keep their ship sailing. Some may buy a $35 theme and ask only a question or two, but another may ask 50. Hopefully it all averages out and the theme designer is able to eat and pay their bills.